Friday, October 17, 2014

Ready for a good Halloween scare? Republicans set to control both houses of Congress.

Forget ISIS. Forget ebola. The scariest headline of
the day comes from the Huffington Post: “GOP Set to Seize the Senate?” or as
Salon aptly puts it, “America’s Looming Freak Show.”

This situation is like those milliseconds before a car
accident where you know the impact is inevitable but you can’t do a thing about
it. After all of the gridlock, the government shutdowns, the partisan
grandstanding, the anti-science, anti-logic rantings, the racist attacks on
Obama, American voters seem hell-bent on doing it all again.

Any country that has a system that allows this to happen is
seriously broken. Thanks to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Supreme
Court decisions, the corporate media, and the Koch’s, conservative billionaires
and companies are simply buying Congress for themselves. Democracy is for
suckers.

How does all of this square with the fact that in poll after
poll, the American people repeatedly rate Congress lower than Satan and rabid
dogs. I DON’T KNOW! I have no idea why the polls tell us one thing and the
people who actually vote tell us something completely different. And I don’t
watch mainstream news shows much, but the evidence indicates they are doing a
very bad job of providing their viewers with solid information on which they
can make their voting decisions. And people are lazy. Many of them will make
their choices based on who had the nastiest attack ad or who looks better
draped in an American flag.

I know that compared to other political blogs, my readership
is small, but I implore any Democrats who find themselves here to vote in the
upcoming midterm elections. It matters. Having Republicans in control of both
houses of Congress will be a godsend for Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and the
late night shows, but it will be a nightmare for the rest of us.